


The Hardest Part

by Dorkling



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence, I’m playing with the Future Past DLCs, Most of the kids here are kind of just mentioned, The deaths are all off-screen, but they do make an appearance, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 14:54:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19111975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorkling/pseuds/Dorkling
Summary: Lucina stands, alive but scarred, after confronting her greatest challenge yet.





	The Hardest Part

The Hardest Part.

     Lucina reclined her sore back against something that used to be a tree. It could more aptly be called a lone, erratically shaped pillar of blackened dead wood tipped with jagged spears reaching out into the sky like the claw of some terrible and hungry beast. The poor beast, were it ever alive, would have starved by now, there was little in the sky save grey clouds and black smoke, even the stars were disappearing. It did Lucina’s back few favours, but she needed somewhere to sit just far enough away from camp for no one to see her and close enough that they knew where to find her.

 

     Lucina looked around the field where she sat, it looked so much like the other fields in her memory, in a way. She saw grass, so much lively grass, and felt the occasional bugs crawling around her, and breathed deeply the smell of damp dirt. Lucina did not know if this was the field of her memory, perhaps it was just a dream. Now the grass was sickly yellow, the bugs were gone, and the dry scent of dust was inescapable. There was something beautiful about the devastation, how complete and utter it all was, like the haunting visage of an ancient ruin had spread itself across the world, hinting at just enough lost glory to capture the imagination. Maybe Lucina was getting too used to the perpetual bleakness. Which would be a terrible thing to start developing now. Humanity was not doomed to die, not anymore. Lucina had the Fire Emblem held tightly against her bandaged body.

 

     It looked smaller than Lucina thought it would have, and yet it felt heavier than it looked. It felt clumsy and awkward when she tried strapping it onto her arm. It should have been relieving, she lived in fear of the Fell Dragon for so long and now she had the means to stop it, for another thousand years at least. Perhaps that was why it felt so strange, it was, in the end, an impermanent solution to a very permanent problem. Or maybe it was because it was incomplete. That despite all the effort, humanity was still powerless. Lucina sighed, trying to keep the prickly feeling in her stomach calm. She was tired of crying.

 

     Lucina tried strapping it onto her arm again, but it still felt wrong. She would have to get used to it, and fast, she would have to carry it to battle against the Fell Dragon. Just as a shield in general, she was running low on people willing to run in front of her. For now, however, she would use her wounds and exhaustion as enough excuse to put off training with it. For now it was little better than a bauble, an old heirloom her family had lost. Lucina’s blistered fingers gripped it more tightly.

 

      _A bauble_ , Lucina smiled ruefully, _I sent my friends to risk their lives for trinkets._

 

     The worst part was that they volunteered to do it, Lucina could not help but love such loyalty and duty. Then to toss such loyal and dutiful people to the wolves. It was a necessity, the history books might say. The very idea made Lucina furious, her grip managed to tighten even more as if the Emblem was the neck of the historian she just imagined. Lucina could never believe that anymore, the only person who should have to die was the leader who had no solutions or alternatives to a suicide mission. A leader who could not keep her own castle a safe place to regroup. Lucina sighed, there was little time for wrestling with her own mind for now, she turned her attention back to the matter at hand. Quite literally, in this case.

 

     Lucina held the shield up to take another look at it, reading the runes all over again, as if there was some hidden riddle in them that told her how to make everything right again. It still amused her that they were basically an instruction manual. The white one would fit into the top, the purple and blue ones would go below it, and then the green and red ones would pop under those. Lucina held up the one gemstone yet recovered. It was green, so verdantly green, enough to fill all the leaves that would have been growing on the tree above her and grass around her. Green like the stains on her pants and dresses in her memories. It was warm too, a kind of warm that Lucina had become too unfamiliar with. Everything had become so much colder recently, she had been holding the gemstone against her body often. There was red all over it too, invisible and intangible, but Lucina knew the red was on it.

 

     Lucina realized that she should put the stone into the Emblem already. She looked over the runes again. Her eyes wandered back to the warm green sphere in her hand. It deserved better than a spot so low. Lucina figured that the placements were more symbolic than requirements, given the flowery language about it. Putting Vert on the top would not hurt. A moment passed. Lucina bit her lip, myths were keen about following the instructions of Gods to the letter. Were the runes written by mortals or by Naga? Lucina hesitated, and then chided herself for hesitating. If it did hurt, it would likely not take Lucina’s life, she had nothing to worry about.

 

     It slid in, harmlessly. Lucina looked at it like a half-understood riddle, that felt too easy. Lucina turned the shield over, and then the green gemstone rolled pathetically out of the socket and fell into the dead earth. Lucina sighed, plucked the green object lying between the yellow grasses, and slammed it into the top socket of the shield. Nothing happened. No sparks of magic shocking Lucina for her defiance of the shield’s instructions, no words of warning from the heavens, no blinding light. The gemstone fit into the socket, then rolled off when Lucina took her hand off of it. Suddenly, the shield felt comfortable, like an extension of Lucina’s arm. Lucina paid the green circle on the ground no attention. Lucina sighed, balled her hands into fists, and spun on the step to begin slamming the Fire Emblem, her birthright and tool of salvation, into the dead tree. Wood splintered when the shield embedded itself into the rotted out trunk, and the splinters flew in all directions as Lucina pulled it out for another thrust into the tree. Lucina paid it all little heed, even as small chunks of wood cut into her hand and face. Lucina’s only caution was closing her eyes to prevent any accidental blindness, and otherwise assaulted the dead oak with reckless abandon. Again and again, it went on for a good while.

 

     Lucina wheezed and panted and sweated, pulling her arm and shield out of the tree with more difficulty than she would ever admit, falling to her knees. The Fire Emblem had been taught the price of defiance now. Lucina exhaustedly grabbed the gemstone, put it into the top socket; and it rolled off a third time. Lucina just stared at it in the ground, judging it. Hating the red staining the gem, staining the Emblem, staining her feet that ran away from the slaughter. Lucina could not even try to wipe some of it off by putting the damned rock where it deserved to be. Lucina lost lifelong friends for this cursed thing. Lucina moved with a shameful quickness, like sneaking sweets into her mouth when she was younger, and put Vert where the Fire Emblem said it was supposed to be. A soft click locked the gem into place. The deed was done.

 

     Lucina somberly returned to the meagre camp, so few managed to escape Ylisstol. So many gave their lives for the few to escape. Lucina felt she was in familiar company in that regard. There was an air of dread. Lucina caught a few worried glances that she was not meant to catch, she wondered if anyone saw her smashing the tree to pieces. It would not do to have a leader who spontaneously attacked dead plants. Lucina soon figured out it was worse than people thinking she had gone mad. Brady and Yarne had arrived with two more gemstones. Just Brady and Yarne. Their eyes were red with tears, and postures sagged with exhaustion. Lucina did not hesitate, before either of them could choke out a word or two she embraced them. Held them until their tears dried. Whispered sweet forgiveness to them until they stopped asking for it. The camp had expected wrath over this much lost, a complete mental breakdown perhaps, but Lucina had none of it for either of them. Lucina could see the red on their feet too.

 

     They found Noire and Nah later. They were shivering under dead trees for shelter from the rain, worn down and stained in so much mud that they looked almost like crude sculptures of themselves. Neither of them had any clue on how they lasted as long as they did. They held up the last two gems in their bones fingers. Lucina unceremoniously shoved the coloured rocks into the Emblem, paying the completed shield no mind. There were more important matters to hand. Nah and Noire argued that the other two were still alive, they did not see them die when they last looked over their shoulders. Lucina did not see her three die either, but she knew, like they knew, that it was a cold comfort. Noire and Nah looked at her like Brady and Yarne did, tears and regret and expecting scorn. Did they think Lucina would punish them? No, Lucina realized they were the same as Yarne and Brady (and herself), it was because they could not forgive themselves. That was alright, Lucina had an endless well of forgiveness to drown the guilt in. Lucina kissed both of them on their foreheads, like one kissed a ring or totem or anything else precious and worth keeping, and held them firmly in her arms while speaking gently her relief that they were alive. Lucina would give each of them the world when this war was over, they would only need to ask. Lucina would commission painters and writers and sculptors to capture their deeds and likeness, and that was her own volition. Anything else would be theirs, all theirs, they deserved it. The fear that they would be forgotten as mere necessities to her campaign had grown in her mind and her solution was to ensure that would never happen. Lucina knew she should put her duties as a sovereign before anything else, but she needed this, she needed to affirm that she did not toss them away like they were nothing. Lucina realized, as they walked back to what remained of her army, that there was a gem for each one of her twelve that were still standing. Lucina clenched her jaw, she heard the mocking laughter of fate in the cold wind.

 

     Lucina sat in her cot, hunched over and leering at the ruins of Ylisstol in the distance. Nah said she had dreams, said that the Awakening has to be performed where everything fell apart. Lucina wondered if she would find three bodies sprawled about in her former home. However, a problem has arisen, Grima had received a similar hint, or so everyone assumed when they saw that six winged serpent still hovering over the burned out rubble of Ylisstol. Lucina would have her final war council soon, one last doomed task and this time she could die in it too. Lucina felt relieved, even the Fire Emblem with all of the invisible red dripping off it finally felt perfectly comfortable on her arm. Lucina looked at the beast hovering over her home, hovering over the corpses of so many friends, like it was all a game of chess and it had taken away all of her best pieces. Lucina did not fear, she would plan, she would march, and she would do battle with this monster; come what may, she was going to kill that fucking dragon, the hardest part was already over.

**Author's Note:**

> HI, EVERYBODY! IT'S ME, A GUY WHO LAST POSTED A FIC ON ANOTHER SITE IN 2015 AND THEN GOT BURIED IN UNIVERSITY STUDYING. 
> 
> Yeah, that was for the maybe 15 people out there who might recognize me via my name. 
> 
> Anyway, here I am, here is the first FE:A fict I have written in too long and my first one on this site.
> 
> Hopefully I'll post some more up before 4 years pass again. 
> 
> On the actual fict, I had a lot of fun writing it. It started just because I realized I could do something angsty that used a lot of COLOUR SYMBOLISM with the Emblem's gemstones. Then it evolved into this. The core appeal of Lucina to me is how she rebounds from her low points and how much she loves her companions so writing a little one shot of Lucina doing exactly that was a joy.


End file.
